“We live in a 24/7 information overload society and if I went out there with namby-pamby ads to drive home a point, nobody would notice,” he said. “So that’s why. Because it’s intended to be provocative.”

Cain released a video this week showing a man shooting a rabbit that had been catapulted into the air like a clay pigeon. “This is small business under the current tax code,” a girl says in the video.

In another ad, the video shows a goldfish gasping for air out of its fishbowl, with the girl saying, “This is the economy on stimulus.”

Cain made a point of saying no animals were hurt in the production of either video.

“The liberals are trying to paint this as I’m killing animals,” Cain said. “I point out to them that the goldfish is still alive. We didn’t kill the goldfish. We put the goldfish back in the bowl.”

As for the rabbit? “The rabbit that we shot was a toy stuffed rabbit,” he said. “It was not a real rabbit.”

“The objective of the rabbit ad is to get people to wake up to fact that we need to throw out the tax code and start over,” Cain said.Follow Alex on Twitter